[hider=End of first half]
Stealing glances down the road the Android managed to steer the vehicle around the ruins that lined the road. The bridge was careening into sight and nearby her target. The blip flashed happily ever faster as she moved closer to the five-story office building alongside the road. All the glass had been removed from its side from the hell-fire blast of two-hundred years ago leaving a disfigured series of intertwining steel and concrete. And...

... Something puzzling flashed on top as a dark form appeared faintly in her vision pressed against the light grey of the skies. A dim light caught itself in its silhouette as something flashed in the sun. There was a bright orange flash followed moments by a booming crack that lit up the afternoon and the screaming of a bullet passed Sweet Gin's face. She flinched, shifting her weight to the side sending her transport careening violently to one side, balancing on one tire and half the other as she flailed violently to re-position herself just as second loud "THWACK" ripped through the air. The pavement alongside her exploding in a dramatic crash of stone and black asphalt as the bullet slammed into the roadway. She hollered and screamed in distress, both at the gunfire nipping towards her and the out of control cart.

Fortunately the ghouls had backed off.

She passed onto the bridge and below her through nets of rebar she fought to dodge she could see the muddy green water bellow her. She swallowed and groaned as a round tore into the front wheel causing the vehicle to swirl about, she corrected it facing backwards to look at the rapidly dispersing hordes of zombies. Evidently they actually feared the range of this structure.

A fifth shot roared out as she passed closer to the building and the thing she had rode in on exploded in two as the heavy-caliber round bust through the thin, red metal bars that built it. Sweet Gin tumbled to the cold ground, acceleration sending her soaring arms outstretched through the air. An expression of distressed, pained anticipation glued itself to her face like a mask as she soured face first into the ground.

She landed with a hard wet smack against the pavement and she cartwheeled over he shoulders to land on her pack facing the sky. She lay dazed staring into the grey-blue abyss above, and would have remained if that familiar glassy flash had not shown above her. Her senses not undullened, her eyes flashed wide and something inside her skipped and jumped, springing her to her feet taking deep gasps as a long barrel of a rifle passed through the sky above to point downwards. She rolled to her feet as a sixth and final loud crack boomed out in the afternoon and something struck along the side of her arm. The metal flashing hot and sparking as the bullet cascaded down past it and exploding in a shower of shrapnel on the ground below. She dove for the marquee over the building with hot pavement impacting against the underside of her chin and into her coat.

The stones fell to a light patter as she rolled ungracefully underneath her new shield.
[/hider]